Is Juice Plus+ Safe for People with Diabetes?

For people with diabetes, every meal can be a math problem. Because certain categories of foods are limited, diabetics have to count how many servings of these “caution foods” they eat per day. One restricted food is fruit, due to its calorie and sugar content. In fact, most diabetic diets only allow two to three serving of fruit a day, and some limit vegetables to three servings a day. This puts diabetics in a bind: they need the established protective benefits of fruits and vegetables, but they can’t eat the amounts recommended by the USDA for optimum health (9-13 servings per day!).

Fortunately, Juice Plus+ can help bridge the gap. It delivers the whole food nutrition of fresh produce — with almost no sugar, starch (which is converted into sugar), or salt (which may raise blood pressure). That’s because those elements are removed when the fruits and vegetables are turned into powder. As a result, Juice Plus+ is a safe way for diabetics to reap the benefits of fruit and vegetable nutrition that might otherwise be missing from their diabetic diets.

Diabetes is an ever-growing affliction, affecting 25.8 million people, or 8.3 percent of Americans. Especially alarming is the growth of diabetes among kids and teens. In fact, type 2 diabetes — in which the body becomes resistant to insulin or doesn’t make enough — rose by 30 percent among kids between 2000 and 2009. If you want to know how bad the problem is consider this: Type 2 diabetes used to be called “adult onset diabetes” because it didn’t strike children. But with skyrocketing rates of obesity, insufficient exercise, and poor dietary choices, even children now get this version of the disease.

However, what fewer people realize is that type 1 diabetes — in which the pancreas makes little or no insulin — is also on the rise, for reasons that are less clear but may be related to overuse of antibiotics. The incidence of this type of diabetes rose by 21 percent in the same time span. Counting both types, there are 187,000 diabetic kids and teens in the United States. That means we’re going to have a whole lot of diabetic adults in a few years worrying if they’re getting enough nutrition from their diets.

Dr. Peter Lodewick, a physician specializing in diabetes, President of the Alabama affiliate of the American Diabetes Association and a diabetic himself, is familiar with that concern. He used to worry that his diabetic diet was missing something until he found out about Juice Plus+. In his book,A Diabetic Doctor Looks at Diabetes, Dr. Lodewick mentions how he can’t eat too many fruits and juices without his blood sugar going up.

Knowing the protective health benefits of fresh fruits and vegetables, I began using a product called “Juice Plus+”. Since using this product, I have felt much more energetic, despite working very long hours, sometimes with minimal sleep. There must be nutrients in the product that I was not getting in my diet.

To be clear, Juice Plus+ is not a treatment for diabetes. However, it is a safe and welcome addition to the diabetic diet, which may be missing key nutritional elements from fruits and vegetables.

Another product that’s safe for some diabetics* is Juice Plus+ Complete, which provides balanced whole food nutrition in a convenient protein-rich drink mix. Whether you’re mixing it up as a healthful “on-the-go” breakfast, a pre-exercise energy drink, a post-workout recovery drink, or a late night snack, Juice Plus+ Complete has the nutrients, protein, and fiber of whole foods to keep you going. Mix it with milk, soymilk, almond milk, rice milk — or for the lowest caloric impact — water.

*The Complete shake mix contains 11 grams of sugar per serving. Some diabetics can tolerate a small amount of sugar, others cannot even get near the sugar, so whether or not the Complete shake mix is OK for you is a personal decision.